1. Field
This invention relates to schema integration, and particularly to methods, systems and computer program products for interactive generation of integrated schemas.
2. Description of Related Art
Schema integration is the problem of creating a unified target schema based on a set of existing source schemas that relate to each other via specified correspondences. The unified schema gives a standard representation of the data, thus offering a way to deal with the heterogeneity in the sources.
Schema integration requires a substantial amount of human feedback due to the many ways in which an integrated schema can be designed based on the set of source schemas and their correspondences. Current approaches do not offer a systematic way of exploring the design space of integrated schemas. Thus, currently, there is one resulting schema that is generated by the system, possibly after interaction with a user. A general drawback of the existing methods is that users cannot see and cannot evaluate the many different alternative integrated schemas that can potentially be better.